The Almoravid and Almohad Empires by Amira K. Bennison

Abstract

The Maghreb Review, Vol. 42, 1, 2017 © The Maghreb Review 2017 This publication is printed on FSC Mix paper from responsible sources BOOK REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS Books reviewed in The Maghreb Review can be ordered from The Maghreb Bookshop. Our catalogue is also available on our website: www.maghrebbookshop.com AMIRA K. BENNISON, THE ALMORAVID AND ALMOHAD EMPIRES, EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2016. Amira Bennison most certainly succeeds in offering a scholarly, reliable and readable volume on the history of the Almoravid and Almohad empires. Starting with the political history of both empires, she then moves to treat the social, economic, intellectual and artistic developments that took place in the Islamic West from the mid-11th to the 13th century, with the addition of useful ‘box-texts’ on particularly significant topics (such as slavery, tribalism, taxation and jihad among others), maps and illustrations. Success was to be expected given that Amira Bennison is a renowned specialist in the history of the region: only a scholar thoroughly familiar with the sources and the extant studies is capable of synthesising what is known, highlighting the most relevant aspects, pointing to what is lacking, and comparing the cases studied with others that may illuminate them. It is true that Amira Bennison’s background and professional insertion in the English-speaking world of scholarship has the effect that she offers for certain themes and views bibliographical references that are not necessarily those that scholars moving in other scholarly worlds would quote, but she will probably point to the same phenomenon when reading French, Spanish or Arabic studies. In spite of the growing linguistic cleavage between English scholarship and that published in other languages, Amira Bennison gives a fair rendition of what has been produced in a variety of languages on the two empires she studies, and this needs to be acknowledged and appreciated as it is not to be taken for granted. Amira Bennison is also to be commended for pointing out that ‘these empires of the Maghrib deserve to be ranked with the Islamic empires of the Mashriq as major contributors to the story of Islamic civilisation, and the Berbers placed with the Arabs, Persians and Turks as a major Islamic people’ (p. 4). Michael Brett and Pierre Guichard – among others – have paved the way to bring about such recognition with important studies that build on their deep knowledge of Islamic history, and this book – built upon similar foundations – will certainly help in this, giving hope that one day the history of the Maghrib will be integrated as it deserves in the writing of Islamic history at large. Amira Bennison is also to be commended for alerting the reader about issues still not well understood, such as the lack of military ethos of the Andalusi frontier 74 BOOK REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS dwellers as compared to the Christians living the same area, the absence of development of commercial fleets by the Almoravids and the Almohads, and how to value courtesan poetry written under the Almohads (to which few studies have been devoted in Western scholarship, although it has attracted scholars writing in Arabic). This is a book that everybody doing research on the history of the Islamic West should add to their library: the newcomer will be introduced to new territory with expert guidance (the chapters on trade and that on art and architecture I found particularly instructive and useful), and the specialist will find new things (such as al-Bakri’s delightful stories recorded on p. 163) and new interpretations, while also finding food for thought regarding what the author believes is the state of the art and comparing it with his/her own conclusions. And here of course there is space for disagreement, as I will now discuss, pointing also to some studies that could be added to what is already a rich and well-selected bibliography. That the monk Eulogius ‘whipped a significant section of the Christian population into resistance to rampant Arabisation and Islamisation’ (p. 17) should be rephrased as ‘…a significant section of the Cordoban Christian population…’, otherwise the different rhythm, location and extension of such processes in the Iberian Peninsula under Muslim rule are lost to the reader. Amira...